Investigators into the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 have turned to who and why someone altered the plane's flight path by typing a complicated code into a flight management computer system.

Possible reasons for turning the plane around include foul play or a mechanical fault that caused the pilots to attempt to turn back to their Kuala Lumpur home base but lost control and consciousness.

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MH370 pilot ' very disciplined'

Search for missing passenger jet now involves a massive area with assistance from many countries. Australia is the latest to weigh in.

According to senior US officials quoted in The New York Times, it was likely that whoever typed the keystrokes into a computer on a pedestal between the captain and co-pilot was knowledgeable about aircraft systems.

The fact that the turnaround was programmed into the computer reinforced the belief of US investigators that the plane was deliberately diverted.

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The reprogramming of the computer happened before ACARS, the plane's automatic tracking system, stopped working. It reported that ACARS cut out about the same time radio contact was lost and the plane's transponder also stopped, fuelling suspicions.

The Australian-led search of the Indian Ocean - over an area the size of France - has begun. The total search area is 2.24 million square miles. ''This is an enormous area. And it is something that Malaysia cannot possibly do on its own,'' acting transport minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.

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Twenty-five countries are involved in the air, sea and ground search. Aircraft from the United States and New Zealand will on Wednesday join Australia's search, which began Tuesday, and China has expressed interest in helping.

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John Young, of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, which is co-ordinating the search, said the search area was the ''best estimate'' of where the plane would have come down. Mr Young said it would likely take ''a few weeks''.

A screen on board a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777-200ER shows the plane's flight path as it cruises over the South China Sea from Kuala Lumpur towards Beijing. Photo: Reuters

He said the area had been mapped out by the US National Transportation Safety Board based on the electronic ''pings'' sent by the plane on hourly intervals, then ''corrected for the water movement''.

It was also based on assumptions about the speed at which the plane was travelling and when it was likely to have run out of fuel.

Currents could have moved wreckage significantly.

Three more Australian Orions would be set to join the search on Wednesday, as would an Orion provided by the New Zealand and a US Navy P-8 Poseidon.

Investigators are scrutinising radar tapes from where the plane departed in Kuala Lumpur because they believe they would show that after the plane first changed its course, it passed through several "waypoints" which are like virtual mile-markers in the sky. That would suggest that the plane was under the control of a knowledgeable pilot, because passing through those points without using the computer would have been unlikely.

Renewed attention on what happened in the cockpit came after authorities in Kuala Lumpur backed away from a statement by Mr Hishammuddin on Sunday that ACARS was shut down before the co-pilot told Kuala Lumpur ground control "all right, good night".

Malaysia Airlines chief executive Ahmad Jauhari Yahya contradicted the information on Monday night, saying the final transmission by the co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid may have occurred before any of the communications systems were disabled. Last night, Mr Hishammuddin said the information did not affect the search.